The Silver Chain (41 page)

His lips are moving silently as if he’s counting himself in, or praying. He pulls his haunches back and so do I. He’s not gentle. He slams his hips into me and I buck back at him. We pull back together, arching in rhythm as if rowing a boat, slam back so hard that we shudder with the impact of bone on bone.

His black eyes bore through me. I want to shut mine, but I fear he might vanish if I do.
I’ve shut my eyes so you can’t see me.
So I keep staring back, not blinking, as we grind and pause, so solid, filling, fitting me perfectly. My body grasping him like a tight glove.

An unearthly groan rumbles in his throat. Is this a first for him, too? This perfect fit? His body tenses up again. I ease myself across his thighs, no sudden movements to startle him or break him out of his trance. My muscles tighten around him, this I remember, this I can do, this I want to do, over and over, until I’m the world’s expert.

His hands loosen slightly on my hips as his face softens. We are totally enclosed in this circle of moonlight. So gentle, compared with the last time. So real. Just the two of us. He’s totally mine, and I’m his. Body and soul.

At last it’s me he’s seeing. Nobody else. His eyes glitter with fresh fire as he renews the rhythm, faster, faster, meeting me in a spiral of excitement until his expression grows dark with the effort of holding back, and then there’s no need to hang on any more, here is his release, his eyes blazing with sheer ecstasy, his gaze never leaving mine as my own climax rushes at me and I fling my arms round his neck and cling to him as if I’m drowning.

Downstairs the clock finds its voice and strikes three.

SEVENTEEN

There are two photographs left unsold. The buyers of the house on the cliffs have confirmed their purchase of the Devon series of sky and seascape seen through battered window frames.

Proud as I am of those naïve efforts, it’s a weight off my shoulders to know they will soon be gone. That house as I knew it will soon be gone. My photographs will provide the local colour.

I am jittery and nervous today. I’m trying to marry my professional pride with the new-found harmony I hope I’ve found with Gustav. Two nights ago he swung through the window like the man from those old Milk Tray adverts, and fulfilled every private dream I’ve had since I arrived in London.

But now that the night is over, our first full night together, and even though he made love to me again before he left for yet another business meeting, I’m still tortured, now that we’re parted, by a nervy exhaustion I’ve never experienced before. He said he’d never let me out of his sight, and yet I don’t know where he is. I know I should be concentrating on this show and what happens after it closes, but I can’t get last night out of my head. The peaks of ecstasy followed by the calm quietness, his touch waking me to do it all again, my tongue on his skin, tasting him, his on me, exploring a new place every time.

All of that has made me a fulfilled, happy woman. All that, except the remaining dilemma. He hasn’t said what happens between us when the exhibition ends. When we can terminate the contract. I want to sell, make money, be successful, but I don’t want to have to cut loose from him. Ever again.

I wish I could speak to Polly, but she’s not answering. Probably on the plane back to NYC.

When Gustav left it was so early in the morning that a milk float was humming across the square, rattling its bottles and crates. A group of schoolgirls with long legs and short socks pushed through the gate into the garden and didn’t seem to be in any hurry to get to school. They stopped under the statue and stared at something on their mobiles, their faces lit by the light box of the screen. It could have been the stage set for a London musical. Any minute I expected a flower seller and a gaggle of chimney sweeps to tap-dance out of the wings.

The two remaining unsold pictures are totally unconnected with each other, which I thought would make them harder to sell. And now I don’t want them to sell. Because what will happen then? Where will I go? How will I decide which of the many flowering avenues to take?

Crystal has handed me a clutch of portrait commissions from private clients, some of whom live as far away as the States.

One of the remaining pictures is the first I ever took with this little silver Lumix camera. I saved up all my Saturday job money and bought it on my seventeenth birthday.

That birthday was the turning point. It was the day Jake kissed me for the first time, outside the camera shop. But they had followed us into town, and saw us kissing, and hauled me back to the car, Jake running after them shouting and swearing and eventually being arrested by an off-duty policeman. They drove me back to the house on the cliffs. Why did they keep dragging me back to the house if they hated me so much?

That birthday I grew up overnight. The man who said he was my father was getting sick then, and didn’t have it in him any more to hit me. He stood in the doorway to the kitchen, smoking the fags that swiftly killed him. The woman went for me like a harridan, pulling out handfuls of my hair. My ugly orange hair, as she called it. I waited for her to stop for a moment, and then I punched her in the face.

You’ll never amount to anything. We know that, and you know that. No-one will love you. No-one will employ you. No-one will want you. You’ve always been a wicked, selfish girl with ugly orange hair, and now you’re a violent slut as well.

The picture is one I took in the shopping centre just after I bought the camera, Jake urging me to hurry up, and just before they came up and caught us kissing. It’s a picture of a very long, empty escalator, shiny and grey, the parallel lines like receding railway tracks, sliding endlessly upwards, up to the next level, up towards the glass ceiling, to the sky and clouds shut out above. It’s entitled
Stairway to Heaven
.

The other picture remaining is a self-portrait in monochrome that Gustav had enlarged to almost monstrous proportions. It hangs on the wall so that it faces punters when they first enter the gallery. It’s a close-up of me wearing my black beret. My face is white and my lipstick looks almost black, but my eyes are staring slightly away from the lens, into the future. It’s been used as a thumbnail for some of the publicity material, but that’s it. So a tricky ask. Why would anyone want to buy that?

‘You’ve fallen for him, haven’t you?’

Crystal and I are sipping our double-strength Americanos and eating doughnuts at my desk in the gallery, looking out at the Christmas lights twinkling through the afternoon rain on the grey river outside and the slow circuit of the London Eye. I’ve been reading through the catalogue of my work, each piece crossed off neatly by Crystal as sold. It’s like reading a diary of the last month. I can remember when each picture went, who it went to, and what had happened to me that day, or that night. What Gustav had said, or done.

I glance sideways at her. ‘You a mind-reader amongst your other talents?’

Gustav isn’t the only one who has changed physically. Since I first saw her dominating the reception area downstairs Crystal has altered her image dramatically. Her hair has finally been unpinned, and is in a dead straight flapper-style bob. The flowing maxi dress has been replaced by a red mannish trouser suit complete with silver tie, pin, French cuffs and fedora.

Well, we’ve all changed. I wonder if even Polly would recognise me now. My scruffy jeans and hoodies have been ceremoniously disposed of by Crystal. I have become incapable of choosing anything to wear without her say-so, and today it is a bunny-soft white cashmere dress, lined with satin, draping off my shoulders and clinging to my legs.

‘You don’t have to be a mind-reader to see what’s been happening,’ she answers crisply. ‘It’s like you were both starving, and someone has stuffed you with several square meals.’

I gasp in disbelief. ‘You
are
a mind-reader! That’s exactly how I thought about Gustav. But it’s not a hugely romantic description of what love can do.’

‘We all need square meals, Serena.’

Over on the other side of the gallery the lift doors swish open.

Gustav steps out of the lift slowly, speaking quietly into his phone, apparently unaware of where he is. Now I know what people mean when they say the heart leaps. Mine is ready to fling itself out of my chest.

Crystal nudges me with her sharp elbow, and I nudge her back.

It’s like time has rewound. He’s wearing the overcoat he had on the night we met. The same thick red scarf wound round his neck. His usually pale, still face is animated. Almost hectic. My leaping heart argues with my anxiously clenching stomach.

He finishes the call then studies the exhibition for a few moments, putting his finger on each of the red dots as if detonating them. Stepping back to look at the pictures as if he’s never seen them before.

At last he turns. And the broad smile that warms his face when he sees me, lifts his mouth, his eyes, his brow, his cheeks, even his hands, is like the sun coming out after a long winter. He dangles the silver chain as if ringing a concierge’s bell, and I come to heel.

‘Crystal,’ he calls, as he calmly clips the chain onto my bracelet and leads me back into the lift. ‘I think we’ll be winding this exhibition up tonight. The last two pictures are reserved.’

‘Hey! Why talk to her about it? Why not me?’

I tug grumpily on the chain but he yanks it, and me, up close to him. ‘I had to give her some kind of instruction, didn’t I, to keep her occupied while I ravish you? The only reason I’m here is because I’m going to explode if I don’t have you right here. Right now!’

I giggle nervously, glancing round the lift with all its mirrors. I lift my hands and pull his face down. ‘I’m yours whenever you want me, Gustav. Why don’t you take me home right now?’

He runs his lips over mine, eyes half closed, brushing sensuously, instantly turning me on yet always, always holding back a little, doing his thing of breathing me in like perfume. ‘No time. No time. I have to be at the airport. And I’ve just come from putting the house in Baker Street on the market.’

I blink. ‘That’s pretty radical, isn’t it?’

‘It’s down to you, Folkes. You’ve opened my eyes.’

‘I think Crystal might have tried to persuade you to get rid of it?’ I murmur tentatively. ‘We’ve had a chat about it.’

He strokes my face calmly, winds my hair round his finger. ‘It earns me a fortune from the sado-masochist hunters with nothing better to do with their money, but I still have to divide the spoils with Margot. I want to chop off that final connection. It’s like mainlining poison. I should have disconnected that artery five years ago.’

We stare at each other in silence. His face is calm, and serious.

‘And in a couple of hours I’m leaving for the States.’

‘You’re leaving London? But you said you wouldn’t let me out of your sight!’ I drop my hands and step away from him. ‘What will happen to us, Gustav? When will I see you again?’

He punches a button and the lift stops. We’re up on the top floor but the doors don’t open.

‘At the weekend. I won’t tell you exactly when. But let’s not waste time talking now, Serena. I want you so badly, I can’t think about anything else. Do you want me?’

I squirm against him hungrily. ‘God, you know I do. All the time!’

He spins me round and pushes me down. ‘Forgive me if I hurt you, Serena. I’m going to blame you. You make me like this. If we were at home, in bed, I’d be gentle, so gentle, I want to worship you as you deserve, as you’re trying to teach me, but there’s no time, no time, and oh God you make me feel like such a brute!’

‘Do whatever you want and be quick about it!’ I growl back. I fall onto my hands and knees. I let him manhandle me. Because this might be the last time. The illogical remnants of fear, so hard to shake off, still grip me. That he might not come back to me. But then the logical voice drowns out those fears. Of course he’ll come back. I know now that I am the chink in his armour. The light in his darkness.

‘Close your eyes. Imagine we’re somewhere beautiful, not stuck in a seedy lift.’

‘I don’t want to close my eyes. I want to see you.’

I stare at him, hanging above me in the mirror. And that’s the moment when I realise I love that face. I love him.

‘Even if I do go away, I can’t bear the idea of anyone else having you.’ He kneels down behind me and starts to push my dress up over my legs, my hips. His breath is hot against my hair. ‘Nobody else. I want to mark you somehow as mine.’

‘We have the silver chain?’

In the mirror his dark eyes flash at me, and he nods. The silver chain is our own not-so-secret code. He loops it loosely round my neck, and then goes on pushing at my dress. The soft cashmere whispers over my spine, raising every hair on my skin. I shiver as he pulls down my knickers, lets the cooler air skim my bare bottom. The zip on his trousers rips down. Pure excitement prickles through me. I’m wet already, my knees trembling and weak. I can’t wait to feel him, his fingers, his hardness. Any part of him is a taper to my flame.

His fingers move over my butt cheeks and ease them apart and I brace myself because I know what’s coming. Something new. I’m ready and willing. I’ll do anything he wants, because I want it too. I can see our reflections, our faces, my kneeling body, his big hands on my hips, moving in the stark light. I don’t feel low down kneeling here. I am elegant. Poised, my white skin in the white dress, my hair waved and fiery around my eager face. I’m kneeling, but I’m not bowed. And he’s not bearing down on me like some kind of rutting stud. He’s holding me safely in place.

‘Any which way, Gustav. I’m your lover today, even if it’s the last time.’

I do bow my head then, because tears are burning my eyes.

‘You talk too much, Folkes. Don’t even think. It’s easier that way.’

I give in to him. Give in to everything. When those last two photographs go, my career will be launched. But this part of my life will all be over.

He smears something cool up between my cheeks, and I subside into a kind of trance. This should feel crude, degrading, but it doesn’t. Gustav’s fingers on me, the cream, the slow, deliberate way he is rubbing it in as if anointing me with some kind of balm, is soothing and tender. That’s how things are between us now.